Currently, the shipment of fragile articles, regardless of size and weight, requires special packaging to avoid damage to the articles. For this purpose, materials such as crumpled paper, nuggets of expanded foam, and/or preformed expanded polystyrene foam is used to package fragile articles, including but not limited to electronic articles such as computer CPUs, computer disk drives, VCR's and the like. The preformed polystyrene foam material is often provided in the form of "corners" or other support pieces which envelope at least portions of the packaged fragile article.
Aside from being bulky, upon an initial impact, the polystyrene foam loses virtually all of its shock absorbing qualities. Thus, fragile articles packaged with rigid pieces of expanded polystyrene foam as the protective media are susceptible to damage from repeated shocks to the box or container. A related disadvantage of such foam packaging is that a relatively thick piece of foam must be employed to protect a packaged article from impact, even though only a portion of the foam will be compressed upon impact. Also, shippers are required to select shipping containers, such as corrugated boxes, which are substantially larger than the article being packaged, merely to accommodate sufficient thicknesses of polystyrene foam which can absorb only one impact.
Another disadvantage of conventional polystyrene foam is that its bulkiness requires packagers to allot significant warehouse storage space to the foam packaging elements prior to use. Larger containers require additional warehouse space, both before and after assembly, and also take up more space per article shipped in rail cars or trailers.
Yet another disadvantage of conventional packaging for fragile articles is that because of its bulkiness, it is not generally economically feasible to ship the expanded polystyrene foam to a recycling location. Furthermore, even when the expanded polystyrene foam is recycled into product, the cost of recycling is relatively large and, generally, no more than about 25 percent recycled content can be utilized, with the remainder being virgin material. Indeed, considering the great quantity of expanded polystyrene foam which is currently in use to provide fragility packaging and the general lack of adequate recycling of this material, the adverse environmental impact is of staggering proportions. The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the above-identified problems.
Commonly-assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,226,543 discloses a package for fragile articles which addresses the above-listed problems, and provides a solution in the form of a unitary package having a platform portion held a specified distance above the substrate by a peripheral wall formation which also borders the platform portion. Shock limiting formations are formed in the sidewall structure for restricting the movement of the platform portion toward the lower edge of the peripheral wall upon shock loading of the platform.
It has been found that for some applications, the amount of thermoformable material required for manufacturing the package is excessive, and results in an uneconomical solution to the above-identified packaging problem.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved unitary shock-resistant package for fragile articles which deforms to absorb shock loading. A related object is to provide such a package which recovers from such deformation after each shock loading to absorb additional shock loadings.
An additional object of the present invention is to provide an improved shock resistant package which reduces the space required for storing large numbers of these packages prior to their use.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide an improved package which employs recyclable material while achieving the above-listed objects.
A still further object of the present invention is to provide a unitary shock-resistant package which economically employs thermoformable material while achieving the above-listed objects.